Defection And Indecision

Newsweek’s national poll is showing the same thing as Rasmussen did earlier in the week and Pew showed several months ago: Democratic defections in a McCain v. Obama race are approximately 20% (19% in this poll), while Obama is drawing 7% of what everyone acknowledges to be a much smaller pool of Republicans. If that held up, that would almost double the Democratic cross-over vote in 2004. Arguably, Democratic party ID has surged enough in the last four years that the Democrats might be able to afford, just barely, losing a fifth of their voters to the other side, but in a super-Democratic year in the wake of a failed Republican administration defections on this scale seem bizarre.

According to Newsweek, Obama leads among independents by just four, and overall they are tied at 46%. Obviously, the outcome will hinge mainly on the 8% undecided, as it always seems to do, and we have reason to believe that voters who remain undecided until fairly late are very focused on candidates’ character and nebulous (and sometimes false) estimations of the candidates’ “values.” Indeed, based on the profile of the undecided voter that Hayes gives, they are not all together naturally Obama-friendly. How did Hayes describe them? For starters, he said they are “not as rational as you think,” “they don’t enjoy politics,” a number are what Hayes defined as “crypto-racist and isolationist” (i.e., they didn’t think Iraqis could develop a functioning democratic government, which strikes me as neither of those things) and “they seemed entirely unmoved by the argument–accepted, in some form or another, by just about everyone in Washington–that the security of the United States is dependent on the freedom and well-being of the rest of the world.” Why then would be they attracted to the candidate who has claimed that the security of the United States is “inextricably tied” to the security of the rest of the world? If they don’t enjoy politics, will they respond well to the standard Michelle Obama lines about being required to remain involved in politics? If you think of politics as a necessary but unpleasant chore, do you want a candidate who promises to give you a lot more chores? I doubt it. Obama’s campaign puts a great emphasis on voter rationality and savvy, and he seems to assume that if he makes a coherent, serious policy argument then he will win people over, but undecided voters are not issue-oriented and don’t always make the connection between things they care about and the candidates who are closest to them.

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One Response to Defection And Indecision

As mentioned in an earlier post, most of these democratic defections to McCain appear to be older Democratic women – Hillary’s core of support, in other words. I’d suggest that they are giving a warped impression of what the Obama-McCain dynamic will be in the fall. Most of these women are, I think, showing their loyalty to Hillary right now by not offering their support to Obama. Once she gets out of the race, however, I think this dynamic will change. Most of these women will return to the Dem fold by the fall, and vote for Obama. These are of course probably the easiest people for Obama to get, since they are a big part of the Democratic base, and there is nothing inherent in Obama’s character or policies that alienates women. It’s merely that right now there’s a huge internal loyalty gap that’s affecting Obama’s polling numbers against McCain. Once that is over and laid to rest, I think Obama will easily recapture most of these votes. On that basis, I think Obama is generally polling about 5-8 pts below his actual general election strength, and he should start to show that if Hillary gets out fo the race in early June. If she does not, if she fights a bitter battle all the way into September, and creates a lasting resentment among her core supporters towards Obama, that could put his win in deep jeopardy. But doing that would also be the equivalent of a political suicide bombing for Hillary.